The Untouchables

Chicago, 1930. In America at this time, alcohol is illegal. But people still want it, so criminals sell it, and they become very rich. The richest and most famous is Al Capone. He is a gang boss. Everybody knows about his crimes, but nobody can stop him, because he pays a lot of police officers and politicians.

At the beginning of the film, one of Capone's bombs kills a little girl in a small shop. Nobody goes to court for this. Then a young government agent arrives: Eliot Ness. He wants to stop Capone. His first police action is a disaster — his men break open a building in front of the newspapers, and inside there is nothing.

Ness meets an old police officer, Jim Malone. Malone is poor and honest: he never takes bad money, so he never gets a better job. Malone helps Ness choose two more men: George Stone, a young police student who shoots very well, and Oscar Wallace, a quiet accountant with glasses. The newspapers give the four men a name: "the Untouchables", because nobody can buy them. And Wallace has an important idea: Capone never pays his taxes.

The four men start to win. They stop a big lorry of illegal whisky near the border with Canada. They also catch one of Capone's accountants — a man who understands all the money. To make him talk, Malone does something very ugly and frightening. It works, but now the "good men" are not really clean any more. Ness watches, and says nothing.

Capone's gang answers with violence. First, Oscar Wallace, the quiet accountant, is shot and killed in a lift with his witness. Then a man comes to Malone's home at night and kills him too. Before he dies, Malone tells Ness one last thing: the other accountant is leaving the city tonight, on a train.

So Ness and Stone wait at the big train station at midnight. A young mother is pulling a baby's pram up the long stone steps. Ness helps her — and then the shooting starts. The pram falls and goes down the steps, step by step, very slowly, while the two men shoot and try to catch it. They save the baby. And they take the accountant alive, because he can be their witness in court.

Capone goes to court, but he is not worried, because he has paid the people who decide — the jury. Then Ness finds Capone's top man, Frank Nitti, in the court building with a gun. Nitti also has the address of Malone's home in his pocket. Ness runs after him, up to the roof, and throws him off it. Nitti dies. The film shows this as a good moment for the hero.

Then Ness shows the judge some evidence: the judge's own name is in Capone's money book. The judge is frightened, and he changes the whole jury for a different one. Now Capone cannot win. His lawyer says "guilty" without asking him, and Capone becomes very angry in front of everybody. The court says he is guilty of not paying his taxes, and he must go to prison for eleven years.

At the end, a journalist tells Ness some news: soon alcohol will be legal again. So all this — the police work, the deaths — was for a law that is going to disappear. The journalist asks Ness what he will do then. Ness gives a short, tired answer about having a drink, and he goes home.

The real work was done by tax men. Frank J. Wilson and his boss Elmer L. Irey worked for the tax office. From 1930, their team read more than two million papers and talked to hundreds of people. They found an old money book with an entry about money paid "for Al", and they found the accountant who could explain it in court. On 17 October 1931 the court said Capone was guilty of not paying his taxes. A week later, on 24 October, the judge sent him to prison for eleven years. Eliot Ness was not part of this case.

Jim Malone is not a real person. The writer invented him. There was no shooting at the train station — no baby, no pram, no steps. And Frank Nitti did not fall from the roof. He lived for twelve more years. On 19 March 1943, one day before he had to go to court about a different crime, he walked to a railway yard and shot himself. The jury was changed in the real trial — but the judge did it, not Ness. Also, this was not a game: between 1919 and 1933 there were 729 gang killings in Capone's part of Chicago. In one of them, on 14 February 1929, seven men were shot dead in a garage. Capone was never taken to court for it.

And Ness? He lost an election, had money problems, and died of a heart attack on 16 May 1957, at only 54. A few months after he died, his book The Untouchables was published. It sold about 1.5 million copies, then there was a TV programme, and then this film. So Ness became famous for something he did not do — and he never knew about it.